while odin has been enjoying a swing of one sort or another for quite some time, it's typically been a quiet and serene activity.

but now, he's started to command us to push him ever higher, higher, higher and faster, faster, faster. and if you throw in the ol' side-winder twisty move while pushing him reaaaaaaallllly high, well, then that's very fun indeed.

sometimes it occurs to me that it might be fun to invent a variant of the slug bug game where you're required to punch ( gently, of course ) the passenger off the car whenever you spot a blatz sign in rural wisconsin. but it'd be hard to drive with all the punching, so maybe it's not a good idea.

the camera is in the shop, hopefully getting a proper cleaning, and i'm busy with all those things that you do after you move, like finally putting together a proper desk ( and by "put together", i mean procuring a flat, solid "door slab" that magically gets tranformed into a 30"x80" gigantic working surface )! and having a proper desk means i can finally take out things like printers and spare computers and, scanners! which means i can get back for the umpteenth time to uploading postcard project postcards. a few people have asked, but we still don't have a new address to send cards, but that will hopefully change soon enough.

cristigirl, who i believe has since deleted her flickr account sent this nice card from bloomfield, new jersey.

[ see the postcard project slideshow and the postcard project/google maps mashup; visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

things are a little more quiet than usual around here for a number of reasons, not least of which being that my camera seems to have an infestation of dust bunnies that i can't get rid of. of course, they are there even when i switch lenses. i even took it upon myself to clean the focusing screen ( it takes a steady hand! ). and they're remain even if i take a photo with the focusing screen removed. so they must be on the ccd, no? so, i even cleaned that. or at least i think i'm cleaning it with a single pass of a fresh lens cloth and a drop of 91% isopropyl alcohol.

i know i should be using eclipse/methanol and one of those special swabs that precisely fits the sensor, but are they really cemented on the there that well, or am i missing the obvious?

it's almost time for another eye exam for odin and hopefully we'll get some clarity on whether his eyesight is still possibly improving ( or maybe just getting measured more accurately ) or whether it's time to get some glasses. i don't think we notice any vision related problems on a day-to-day basis and, in fact, we're sometimes amazed at just how good his vision seems to be. yesterday he was reading letters off little 1 inch toy blocks from about 6 feet away, which kris can't even do if she's not wearing her glasses and odin's eyesight is supposedly twice as "bad" as hers.

we've been working on getting odin more comfortable with the eye exams and if you ask him what dr. peters is going to do in a couple of weeks he takes his fingers and holds his eyelids open wide and laughs. hopefully he'll feel the same way when there are dilation drops and bright lights involved.

we tell him that it's possible that he might get glasses after his exam just like his mamma and some of his favorite aunts and cousins and grandparents, which he thinks is super cool. and he's even enjoying tromping around the house wearing a spare of big people glasses while exlaiming "i SEEEE you! i SEEEE you!"

wearing a pair of pajamma bottoms on his head to keep them on just adds to the funfest.

wild horses couldn't drag odin away from the horse drawn parade that marks beginning of wild west days.

he's seen horses before, but never so many all at once. with over 60 teams from all over the country he saw big horses and small horses and fast horses and slow horses and strong horses and even stronger horses. and even a few singing cowboys and cowgirls. amusingly, he seemed slightly more interested in counting the horses than anything else and every so often, he'd quietly announce the correct number of horses galloping by.

i think he might enjoy the rodeo, but i'm still debating the merits of the hog wrassling so we might skip that.

i know, i know. the aap recommends weaning from a bottle at 12 months. but it seems that only half of all parents manage to do that and half of the rest of them wait until age 2 or later. so, at least we're not lonely slackers. actually, we did start the process early and odin has been down to a bottle before his afternoon nap and bedtime for quite some time. but those last two bottles seemed to be such strong "time for sleep" signals that we feared he'd have a rough time giving them up and maintaining his sleep schedule.

the other night kris was putting odin to bed and decided that since we were down to only having usable parts for one working bottle that she'd throw it away and tell odin it was broken and went in the trash. as luck would have it no white lies were needed since after that very feeding she discovered he really had broken the nipple! the following afternoon when it came close to nap time, she showed him the bottle and the broken nipple and told him that she was very sorry, but he had broken the bottle and we didn't have anymore.

"uh, oh. bro'kin."

"yes, it's broken. so we have to put it in the trash."

"bro'kin! put...in...trash!"

and with that he excitedly put the bottle in the trash with his very own hands and, for the most part, has been quite unconcerned with the sudden absence of the bottle and happily sips a much smaller amount of milk from a sippy cup while listening to a bedtime story. or five.

i thought it was quite a clever approach, but apparently it might not be that uncommon a tactic:

""What really worked for me was making my 17-month-old son throw his bottle out in the garbage himself. At bedtime when he asked for it I said to him, 'Branden, you threw it away, remember? It's all gone!' He understood that it was gone because he'd seen it happen, and knowing that he did it himself seemed to comfort him." — Anonymous"

YA RLY!.

the above the fold story in the la crosse tribune says it like it is.

while i did know they are the reason we have so few bugs in our yard, i didn't know each bat can eat up to 2,400 insects a night! and while we had been told that the bats do not stay over winter, that's apparently only true for little brown bats, but i'm fairly certain that at least some of the bats in our chimney are big brown bats and they can live in the same place for 30 years! as we've learned, you tend to find more bats in your house in august , when the youngest bats are taking their first flights and mistakenly end up in the house.

and apparently we're not alone, one bat expert estimated that at least 10 percent of home in la crosse have bats and he was fielding 50-75 calls a day from homeowners wanting them removed!

we haven't had a bat in the house for five days! whoohoo! so i think we're getting a lot better at finding the places they can get in. or maybe they're just getting better at hiding :-)

today is kris' birthday! since she's not really a cake person, i thought it would be nice to get her one of her favorites desserts, an apple pie. but she makes a pie, so it's a little tricky because i can't just get any ol' apple pie from the grocery store. it has to be a great apple pie. i assumed that there must be someplace like that in the area and i got a tip to check out the meating place, which - conveniently enough - is only three blocks away from our house ( well, actually, almost everything is three blocks away :-) ). sure enough, they make pies and although they didn't have apple on the menu today they said they'd be happy to make kris a special birthday pie. it had just come out of the oven when i picked it up after work and as i left the owner asked me to please remember to bring back the glass plate!

wouldn't you know it - it's one of the best pies we've ever had.

and you can't have a pie made from fresh organic apples without a wallop of sibby's organic vanilla ice cream which is made right here in vernon county; you can get it at certain whole foods "in the city", but otherwise it has a pretty limited distribution right now. but that'll change soon, because it's knock-out good.

as i stood teetering on top of a radiator i pushed against the lilipution-sized attic opening, sending a torrent of ancient detritus into my eyes, i wondered if this was the part of the movie where the audience, sitting on the edge of their chairs, yelled "DON'T OPEN THAT DOOR!" right before thousands of bats exact their revenge on the unsuspecting invader.

i mean, if starlings can almost take down a tree what's to stop a bevy of bats from felling someone who just happens to be dumb enough to precariously position himself on the edge of a heater while trying to operate a flashlight and a camera?

no, really, i'm not trying to get myself a darwin award, i just didn't want to go by a ladder. which, i guess in retrospect, is the kind of reasoning that ends up getting one just such an award.

i almost stopped counting the days today, but i couldn't quite bring myself to do it. i don't know why.

it's still feels a bit strange to look at odin and so clearly see "my" facial expressions. or maybe they're really my father's. or perhaps his father's.

well, not quite the picnic table, but really, really close to it. odin has another cousin visiting in town and we all went out to wildcat mountain state park which offers spectacular views across the kickapoo valley. it's quite a nice spot for a picnic, except for the 400 foot drop off that's mostly lacking any sort of barrier to prevent toddling toddlers from tumbling down.

mmmmmm, yummy!

sure, it's a chicken foot, but it's an organic chicken foot, so it must be good!

i should probably point out that the feet will eventually be strained out to make chicken stock. eveyone knows that chicken feet are the secret ingredient to the perfect broth, don't they?

lets just say you had not one, but two, bats sequestered into a corner of a "built in" area in your toddler's playroom, which is a recessed cedar space that I suppose might be used to put in an entertainment center if you're into that sort of thing. they are wedged in the corner of a space that's only about 18 inches wide and they are about 8 feet off the ground, so even if you're tall it's still a bit of a stretch to get to them and since the space is so narrow it seems likely that they will GET TANGLED IN YOUR HAIR!

so, smarty pants, how do you get them out while minimizing trauma to yourself and the bats ( i.e. any solution that involves smeared bat guts on the inside of the space is not an option :-) ). oh, and they seem pretty content to sit where they are, so just banging on the wall isn't an option.

odin has been going through a little phase where he's decided that he doesn't want to eat vegetables.

but he loves soup, mostly because he enjoys slurping the soup straight out of the bowl. luckily, kris can whip up a mean brocolli and cheese soup, so he gan slurp away and get a few servings of vegetable goodness. we've discovered the trick also works with asparagus soup. and i'm guessing there's going to be a big batch of cream of spinach soup in our future soon :-)

when i first saw the "powered by biodiesel" stickers on the organic valley company cars, jetta tdis, i thought it was a great way to reinforce the sustainability and environmentally friendly attributes of the brand and it was probably a not so subtle way to support a new market for soy which would probably make the cooperative members who grow soy happy.

later i learned that the cooperative owns its logistics operation which is called, appropriately enough, "organic logistics". every single organic logistics truck runs on biodiesel, and not a wimpy grade either, many of their trucks run on B50 which means that it's 50 percent biodiesel and 50 percent regular diesel. these days it's looking like a pretty smart decision because when i was at the pump today the B50 was a full 15 cents cheaper than regular diesel, which keeps transportation costs low, relatively speaking. and keeping costs low means the cooperative can pay their farmers more money for product, which means that small family farmers like travis forgues can thrive in a state that sees four percent of its dairy farms shut down each year.

i also have a diesel jetta, but volkswagen only officially sanctions B5 diesel ( meaning a mix with 5 percent biodiesel ) and using a grade with more biodiesel will void the warranty. but i'm thinking that if it hasn't had any ill effects on the company cars and transportation trucks, surely it must be good for the family car?

so, kris and i were discussing The Bat Invasion and were slowly coming to peace with the fact that in all likelihood there were more bats in the house or freely coming and going by whatever means necessary, since after we found the bats in the fan, we discovered new, fresh guano in odin's bedroom and little bits here and there scattered around the house. but at least we could find some comfort in the fact that it seemed like, for the most part, they were happy to keep to themselves.

as we headed up a very dark stairwell for bed, kris let out a little screech and whispered ( so as not to wake odin ), "a bat just flew by my ear!". sigh. so we quickly turned on the lights and scanned around for signs of a bat. nothing. i wondered aloud if possibly maybe she thought she felt a bat because we were just talking about them and the stairwell really was very dark and spooky. yes, i know, it really was the kind of comment that i probably should have left to myself. moments later she brought odin into our room on the chance that the bat she was sure she saw was hiding out in his room.

the following morning, bright and early, i walked down the stairs towards the bathroom, yawning and wondering if there really was a bat. as i rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked down and took a double take and then a triple.

a big brown bat was swimming in the toilet.

i kid you not. his head was above water and he was swimming around in slow circles. i quickly closed the lid, relieved - ahem - that i didn't have to do anything that required sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night and i pondered what to do next.

at first, i thought it might have injured itself or maybe was on the way to drowning, but i could hear it trying to flap its wings with the toilet lid down while i took a shower and finally concluded that if it were trying to drown itself it probably wasn't going to have the job finished before i went to work. i tossed out the idea of just leaving him in the toilet until he met his end, but kris voted down that proposal. then, and remember this is before i've had any coffee, i thought i might be able to scoop him out with a spatula, but after a few attempts, i realized that the chances of him happily sitting on the end of a spatula were vanishingly small. perhaps i could grab him with a plastic over my hand and close up the bag until i got outside! perfect! luckily, i remembered that bats do actually have teeth they were probably capable of piercing a plastic bag. so, what to do?

i have to admit i was a little impressed with myself as i macgyvered a pair of oven mitts into bat removal protection gear. the bat was not happy. and i'm fairly certain that he was schreeching something awful outside of the frequency range human ears can hear. we walked outside and i calmly told him that that he better go off and tell all his friends that if i saw him or any of his kind in my house again then, well, then things were going to get ugly.